In
yet another paper last month, one of his 60-plus academic articles so far this year, Ioannidis this time took aim at incorrect COVID-19 predictions. He pointed out that hospitals had overestimated their numbers of coronavirus patients, to the detriment of others in need of care.
He did not mention a prediction of his own, made in March, that the coronavirus could cause 10,000 deaths in the US. As of late July, the death toll is above 140,000, higher than anywhere else in the world.
“Despite involving many excellent modelers, best intentions, and highly sophisticated tools,” Ioannidis wrote, “forecasting efforts have largely failed.”
He was right.